Wednesday, August 31, 2011

We don’t need to give a lot of thought to the problem of
dealing with tainted meat these days. By ‘tainted’ I mean ‘fresh’ meat which is
no longer ‘fresh’.

Think for a moment on what it must have been like in the not
too distant past, before the days of refrigeration. Remember that a domestic
refrigerator in every house did not happen until many decades after commercial
refrigeration. When I grew up in a working-class family in post-war England, we
did not have a fridge – nor did anyone else in the neighbourhood. At least the
butchers did have refrigeration, so presumably the meat our mothers bought each
day was fresh at the point of sale.

In the past, high-protein food was far too valuable to waste,
but inevitably, especially in warm weather, meat would be past its best by the
time the cooks got to it. What to do? Cookery books were full of advice on how
to deal with tainted meat, and today I want to share a couple of methods with
you –with the caveat of course that these would not be considered safe today.

Tainted meat may be restored by washing in cold
water, afterwards in strong chamomile tea, after which it may be sprinkled with
salt and used the following day, first washing it in cold water. Roughly pounded
charcoal rubbed all over the meat also restores it when tainted. In Scotland
meat is frequently kept a fortnight smothered in oatmeal, and carefully wiped
every day; and if it should be a little tainted, it is soaked some hours before
it is used, in oatmeal and water.

It has
been successfully proved, by many
experiments, that meat entirely fly-blown has been sufficiently purified to
make good broth, and had not a disagreeable taste, by being previously put into
a vessel containing a certain quantity of beer. The liquor will become tainted,
and have a putrid smell.

The
Kaleidoscope: or, Literary and scientific mirror (1824).

Cooked
leftover meat could also not be wasted, and was commonly served at the next
meal, perhaps doctored up a little. Here, from Mrs. Lee’s book, is one way of recycling
leftover steak.

Beef, Cold Rump
Steaks To Warm.

Lay them in
a stew pan, with one large onion cut in quarters, six berries of allspice, the
same of black pepper, cover the steaks with boiling water, let them stew gently
one hour, thicken the liquor with flour and butter rubbed together on a plate;
if a pint of gravy, about one ounce of flour, and the like weight of butter,
will do; put it into the stewpan, shake it well over the fire for five minutes,
and it is ready; lay the steaks and onions on a dish and pom- the gravy through
a sieve over them.

Quotation for the Day.

Ever since
Eve started it all by offering Adam the apple, woman's punishment has been to
supply a man with food then suffer the consequences when it disagrees with him.Helen Rowland

I have a puzzle for you today. Maybe a food historian or
linguist has already solved this, but if so, I don’t know about it. A popular
dish of the nineteenth century in England was ‘China Chilo.’ In The Spirit of Cookery: A Popular Treatise on
the History, Science, Practical, Ethical and Medical Import of Culinary Art,
(1895) by J.L.W. Thudicum, this was described as “a ragout of green peas and
mutton, stewed with some onions, lettuce, butter and spices, to be served with
rice boiled in broth and moistened with butter. This is a most excellent dish,
and is most conveniently eaten with a dessertspoon.’

It sounds quite delicious, doesn’t it? But whence the
name?Dishes with names suggesting an
exotic foreign origin became increasingly popular as the British Empire
extended, but there is nothing evocative of China about the dish, and ‘chilo’
is an even greater mystery.

I have found but one attempt at an explanation. The ‘chilo’
is an alternative (Italian) spelling of ‘chyle’, which is ‘The white milky
fluid formed by the action of the pancreatic juice and the bile on the chyme,
and contained in the lymphatics of the intestines, which are hence called lacteals.
‘The term has been used to designate the fluid in the intestines just before
absorption.’ Thus, the suggested explanation that the dish was a similar
colour. A cook naming a dish in recognition of it looking like vomitus? I don’t
think so.

While the
puzzle waits to be solved, here is the earliest recipe I have found so far:

China Chilo.

Mince a
pint-basin of undressed neck of mutton, or leg, and some of the fat; put two
onions, a lettuce, a pint of green peas, a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful
of pepper, four spoonsful of water, and two or three ounces of clarified
butter, into a stew-pan closely covered; simmer two hours, and serve in the
middle of a dish of boiled dry rice. If Cayenne is approved, add a little. This
cannot be done too slowly.

A
new system of domestic cookery, (1807) by Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell

Quotation for the Day.

The
qualities of an exceptional cook are akin to those of a successful tightrope
walker: an abiding passion for the task, courage to go out on a limb and an
impeccable sense of balance.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Butter has been
around for a very long time, and the language of the ‘fatty substance obtained from cream by churning’ proves it. The Oxford English Dictionary has an
enormous list of compound butter-words.

While you
are buying your butter from the butter-dairy or the butter-shop, you might chat
with the butter-maker, butter-dealer, butter-monger, butter-merchant,
butter-man, butter-wife, or butter-woman. Your butter might have already had a
trip in a butter-cart to get to the point of purchase, and then you take it
home, perhaps wrapped in butter-muslin. Your purchase might have spent some
time in a butter-churn, butter-tub, butter-barrel, butter-cask, or
butter-firkin before you take it home and put it your butter-dish, butter-crock
or butter cooler – or melt it and put it in your butter-boat. You might use a butter
knife, butter scoop, or butter tongs to manage your butter while you decide
whether to simply spread it on your bread or make butter-cream, butter-sauce,
butter-biscuits, or butter-cake.

That isn’t all
of the butter-words, but I didn’t want to labour the point too hard. One
compound usage that was particularly enlightening is ‘butter salt’, which is ‘fine common salt in small crystals
obtained by rapid evaporation of brine, used in salting butter.’ Another is ‘butter-weight’ – which usedto be 18 oz to the pound. In the future I must do a post on how
and when a pound or an ounce or a hundred was not always the same for every
product.

I now have
an excuse to give you “Butter Biscuits” – several varieties in fact.

First, the ‘healthy option’, from Allinson’s Vegetarian Cookery Book (1915) – a rather bleak,
sugarless, saltless, hardtack-style cracker, which would qualify for inclusion
in a ‘Three Ingredients Cook Book.’

Butter Biscuits.

½ lb.
butter, 2 lbs. wholemeal flour, ½ pint milk. Dissolve the butter in the milk,
which should be warmed, then stir in the meal and make to a stiff, smooth
paste. Roll out very thin, stamp it into biscuits, prick them out with a fork,
and bake on tins in a quick oven.

Secondly, a
similar concept, this time the dough being beaten into submission before
baking, from Eliza Leslie's Seventy-Five Receipts, for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (1828) [with thanks to blog commenter Carolina for her correction of my wrong attribution.]

Butter Biscuits.

Half a pound
of butter.

Two pounds
of flour, sifted.

Half a pint
of milk, or cold water.

A salt-spoonful
of salt.

Cut up the
butter in the flour, and put the salt to it. Wet it to a stiff dough with the
milk or water. Mix it well with a knife. Throw some flour on the paste-board, take
the dough out of the pan, and knead it very well. Roll it out into a large
thick sheet, and beat it very hard on both sides with the rolling-pin. Beat it
a long time. Cut it out with a tin, or cup, into small round thick cakes. Beat
each cake on both sides, with the rolling-pin. Prick them with a fork. Put them
in buttered pans, and bake them of a light brown in a slow oven.

Weigh two
pounds of flour, rub into it four ounces of butter, and two ounces of raw
sugar; mix one cupful of good fresh yeast in a
cupful of warm water, stir it in, cover up, and let stand by the fire all
night. Next morning, work in a quarter of an ounce of powdered ammonia; knead
together, and make up in small biscuits. Prickle them, and bake in a quick
oven.

Quotation for the
Day.

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens
if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

Sunday, August 28, 2011

There are two distinct types of Black Butter in the repertoire of the
Compleat Chef. One is a thick, quite dark, conserve of fruit of the type
enjoyed by Jane Austen, and which featured in a blog post some time ago. The
word ‘butter’ in this context intends to convey its spreadable nature, as it
does in lemon butter, orange butter, peanut butter, and so on.

Before we move on to the second type, I give you a variation of the
first, made with fruit other than the traditional apples.

Black Butter.

Three pounds of fruit, (viz. currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and
cherries) to one pound of sixpenny sugar boiled till it is quite thick: it must
waste half the quantity. It is a very pleasant sweetmeat, and keeps well.

The Lady’s
Assistant for Regulating her Table,
Charlotte Mason, 1777

The second
type of black butter is the ‘French’ style, called in its native tongue and in classic
cookery texts, ‘beurre noire’, and
traditionally used as a sauce for fish, eggs, and other dishes. An important
concept is that the butter is not, in fact, black in colour. It is made by
carefully and slowly cooking butter over a low heat until it is a deep mellow
brown. If the melted butter becomes black it is overdone and ruined. I have
never understood why it is not called ‘beurre
brunes’. Some inscrutable French reason, I suppose. To complete the dish,
the flavour of the melted brown butter is then sharpened with lemon juice,
vinegar, or capers before use.

Black Butter

Shake a
quarter of a pound of butter in a frying-pan till it becomes a deep brown; let
it settle; skim and pour it clear off; wipe the pan, and return the butter into
it; add two spoonfuls of tarragon vinegar, salt, and mix it.

Domestic Economy and Cookery, for rich and poor, by a
Lady, 1827

There is an
entirely different English melted butter sauce – some ill-read folk even
believe it is the only English sauce – and you can read a few opinions and
recipes for it in a previous post.

Quotation for the Day

Butter is the great staple article for breakfast & tea among all
classes. The idea of restraining children from a liberal use of good fresh
butter is exploded, & they almost live upon bread & butter in this
city.John Pintard
(1759-1844) writing from New York to his daughter in New Orleans.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Historically, the word ‘puddings’ was just as likely – at times,
more likely – to refer to a ‘savoury’ dish rather than a sweet, ‘dessert’ dish
(and the distinction between sweet and savoury dishes was blurred, if you go
back to medieval times.) We have discussed the general subject of puddings, and
the troublesome etymology of the word in a previous post (here), but the topic
is far from exhausted.

I want to talk today about vegetable puddings. Again, this
is not a new topic here – I considered the idea of vegetable puddings in a
previous post, as a way of helping you to get your ‘five a day’ by adding them
to your dessert menu. My favourite idea was the ‘Pudding in a Turnep Root’, but
there have been many others.

The concept behind these recipes was not, of course, that of
increasing vegetable consumption. At the time, a far greater priority for the
mass of the population was to get more protein. The starchy vegetables (which
could be home-grown, or were cheap) which feature in many of these sweet
puddings acted to reduce the amount of flour or other grain, and to fill the
belly, so the lack of a nice steak or chicken breast did not bite so much.

The vegetable puddings which have so far featured in this
blog have been puddings in the dessert style – like this one, from the Los
Angeles Times Cookbook: 1,000 Recipes of Famous Pioneer Settlers ...
(1905)

Vegetable
Pudding.

Mrs. Nellie B.
Stewart, 1417 East Twenty-first street, Los Angeles.

One cup
carrots, one cup potato, one cup sour apples, one cup currants, one cup
raisins, one cup bread crumbs, one cup flour, one cup suet, two cups white
sugar, one teaspoon soda, one cup walnuts coarsely chopped. Steam three hours.
The vegetables and apples can be cut with a cutter.

Let us not
forget that a vegetable pudding can function very well, without the sugar and
spices, as a vegetable dish. Either of the following would make a fine main
course for a vegetarian dinner.

Vegetable Pudding.

Take spinage,
peas, and broad beans, boiled each separately, and rubbed through a sieve.

Mix with the
whites of two eggs, a little pepper, and salt; fill a basin, and boil.

Maigre Cookery (1884)

A Vegetable Pudding.

Boil a savoy
cabbage, and squeeze it as dry as possible in a clean rubber; then chop it very
fine, and put it into a stew-pan, and about an ounce of butter, and a little
pepper and salt; set it over the fire; keep stirring it until quite hot; then
put it on a plate to cool:—boil two carrots, but do not scrape them; when
boiled, cut them in quarters, and shape them round with a knife:—mash some
potatoes very fine, make them very good, and put them to cool:—boil some
spinach, and squeeze it very dry ; chop it very fine; put it into a stew-pan,
about an ounce of butter, a little cream, pepper and salt; stir it about until
quite hot, and dry; then put it on a plate to cool:—then mash some turnips ;
the turnips should be squeezed very dry; the best way is to put them in a clean
cloth, and squeeze the water out; then put them into a sauce-pan, with about
two ounces of butter, a little white pepper, and salt; put them over a slow
fire ; keep stirring them while on the fire; then put them to cool:—boil four
heads of nice greens; then squeeze the water well from them, and leave them
their full length:—butter an oval, or round mould (called a crocant mould); at
each end put carrots, then potatoes, next greens, then turnips, next carrots,
then cabbage, then spinach, and then potatoes ; they should all be laid longways down the mould; make a star in the bottom of
the mold, with carrots, cut in the shape of leaves; fill the middle up with
mashed potatoes; put it in the oven (or a stew-pan, with water to come up about
three parts of the mould) about half an hour before it is wanted; (the oven is
best, as the vegetables bind together better) be very particular about
buttering the mould; make as much butter stick to it as you can. To make it
easier understood, I have given the following plan of the method of putting the
vegetables into the mould.

N. B. The
vegetables should be rolled in the shape of a sausage, put quite close to each
other; when done, turn it out; it is a handsome dish for the middle, or two of
them for flanks.

A complete system of cookery on a plan entirely new (1816) by John
Simpson.

Quotation for the Day.

“'Make a remark,'
said the Red Queen; 'it's ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!'”

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Nowadays most beer-lovers don’t agonise over the difference
between ale and beer, and most would only order a porter if they wanted their
baggage delivered. Historically the differences are important, however, so as
the words came up in yesterday’s post, I thought I should clarify their
meanings. I can do no better than the author of A dictionary, practical,
theoretical, and historical, of commerce ..., Volume 1, (1840), who precedes his explanation of ale
and beer with a short historical overview:

ALE and BEER, well-known and
extensively used fermented liquors, the principle of which is extracted from
several sorts of grain, but most commonly from barley, after it has undergone
the process termed malting.

I. Historical Notice of Ale and Beer.—The manufacture of ale or beer is
of very high antiquity. Herodotus tells us, that owing to the want of wine, the
Egyptians drank a liquor fermented from barley (lib. ii. cap. 77.) The use of
it was also very anciently introduced into Greece and Italy, though it does not
appear to have ever been very extensively used in these countries. Mead, or
metheglin,was probably the earliest intoxicating liquor known in the North of
Europe. Ale or beer was, however, in common use in Germany in the time of
Tacitus (Morib. Germ. cap. 23.). "All the nations," says
Pliny, "who inhabit the West of Europe have a liquor with which they
intoxicate themselves, made of com and water (fruge madida). The manner
of making this liquor is somewhat different in Gaul, Spain, and other
countries, and it is called by many various names; but its nature and
properties are everywhere the same. The people of Spain, in particular, brew
this liquor to well that it will keep good for a long time. So exquisite
is the ingenuity of mankind in gratifying their vicious appetites, that they
have thus invented a method to make water itself intoxicate."— (Hist.
Nat. lib. xiv. cap. 22.) The Saxons and Danes were passionately fond of
beer; and the drinking of it was supposed to form one of the principal
enjoyment! of the heroes admitted to the hall of Odin.—(Mallet's Northern
Antiquities, cap. 6, &c.) The manufacture of ale was early introduced
into England. It is mentioned in the laws of Ina, King of Wessex; and is
particularly specified among the liquors provided for a royal banquet in the
reign of Edward the Confessor. It was customary in the reigns of the Norman
princes to regulate the price of ale; and it was enacted, by a statute passed
in 1272, that a brewer should be allowed to sell two gallons of ale for a penny
in cities, and three or four gallons for the same price in the country.

The use of hops in the
manufacture of ale and beer seems to have been a German invention. They were
used in the breweries of the Netherlands, in the beginning of the fourteenth
century; but they do not seem to have been introduced into England till 200
years afterwards, or till the beginning of the sixteenth century. In 1530,
Henry VIII. enjoined brewers not to put hops into their ale. It would, however,
appear that but little attention was paid to this order; for in 1552 hop
plantations had begun to be formed. — (Beckmann's Hist. Invent, vol. iv.
pp. 336—341. Eng. ed.) The addition of hops renders ale more palatable, by
giving it an agreeable bitter taste, while, at the same time, it fits it for
being kept much longer without injury. Generally speaking, the English brewers
employ a much larger quantity of hops than the Scotch. The latter are in the
habit of using, in brewing the fine Edinburgh ale, from a pound to a pound and
a half of hops for every bushel of malt.

2. Distinction between Ale and Beer, or Porter.—This distinction has been ably elucidated by Dr.Thomas
Thomson, in his valuable article on Brewing, in the Supplement to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica: —" Both ale and beer are in Great Britain
obtained by fermentation from the malt of barley; but they differ from each
other in several particulars. Ale is light-coloured, brisk, and sweetish, or at
least free from bitter; while beer is dark-coloured, bitter, and much less
brisk. What is called porter in England is a species of beer; and the
term "porter" at present signifies what was formerly called strong
beer. The original difference between ale and beer was owing to the malt
from which they were prepared. Ale malt was dried at a very low heat, and
consequently was of a pale colour; while beer or porter malt was dried at a
higher temperature, and had of consequence acquired a brown colour. This
incipient charring had developed a peculiar and agreeable bitter taste, which
was communicated to the beer along with the dark colour. This bitter taste
rendered beer more agreeable to the palate, and less injurious to the
constitution than ale. It was consequently manufactured in greater quantities,
and soon became the common drink of the lower ranks in England. When malt
became high priced, in consequence of the heavy taxes laid upon it, and the
great increase in the price of barley which took place during the war of the
French revolution, the brewers found out that a greater quantity of wort of a
given strength could be prepared from pale malt than from brown malt. The
consequence was that pale malt was substituted for brown malt in the brewing of
porter and beer. We do not mean that the whole malt employed was pale, but a
considerable proportion of it. The wort, of course, was much paler than before;
and it wanted that agreeable bitter flavour which characterized porter, and
made it so much relished by most palates. The porter brewers endeavoured to
remedy these defects by several artificial additions. At the same time various
substitutes were tried to supply the place of the agreeable bitter communicated
to porter by the use of brown malt. Quassia, cocculus indicus, and we believe even
opium, were employed in succession: but none of them was found to answer the
purpose sufficiently. Whether the use of these substances be still persevered
in we do not know; but we rather believe that they are not, at least by the
London porter brewers."

The author does not explain how ‘strong beer’ became known
as ‘porter’, so I must fill in the gap
with the help of the Oxford English
Dictionary. ‘Porter’ is short for ‘porter’s ale’ or ‘porter’s beer’. It is
‘a dark-brown or black bitter beer,
brewed from malt partly charred or browned by drying at a high temperature’ and
was designed as an especially strong beer for the especially strong men who
worked as porters in the markets of London, and without whom the city would
have ground to a halt.

Recipe for the Day.

Some time ago I gave you a beer-themed menu, and included a
recipe for a Chocolate Beer Cake. Several beer-based recipes followed in
another post (here.) Today I give you a beer bread recipe from the San Antonio Light of November 12, 1937.

Heat beer
and syrup together until lukewarm; mix yeast and salt and stir in some beer
mixture. Cut small pieces of orange peel separately into the rye and white flour.
Make a smooth dough by mixing all ingredients; let stand for 3-4 hour. Knead dough
into long loaves; rub with flour; and cover dough until it raises. Bake an hour
over slow fire; and brush loaves with hot water, rolling them in cloth until
used.

Makes 3
loaves. Excellent for sandwiches.

Quotation for the Day.

The roots and herbes beaten and put into new ale or beer and
daily drunk, cleareth, strengtheneth and quickeneth the sight of the eyes.Nicholas Culpeper

One last post (for the time being) on liquorice. We have had
medicinal liquorice, and liquorice in cakes, today we have it in a beverage or
two.

A child’s favourite, from my own childhood: put a stick of ‘Spanish’
in a bottle, add water, and shake until the liquorice is dissolved, or the
child becomes bored, whichever comes first (usually the latter). Drink. Or not,
because the fun was in the making, and it is not as good to drink as lemonade,
to a child’s taste.

And a
slightly more sophisticated version, from a useful book called Household
management for the labouring classes, (1882) by H.L. Hamilton:

Liquorice water.

Break an
ounce of liquorice stick and half an ounce of gum arabic into a jug; add a
quart of boiling water; cover the mouth of the jug, and let it stand till cold.

Finally, for
those of you who love dark beer, or liquorice, or both, I give you the
instructions for making your own. They are taken from a book by William Cobbett,
published in 1824, with the full and informative title of:

Cottage economy:
containing information relative to the brewing of beer, making of bread,
keeping of cows, pigs, bees, ewes, goats, poultry and rabbits, and relative to
other matters deemed useful in the conducting of the affairs of a labourer's
family: to which are added,
instructions relative to the selecting, the cutting and the bleaching of the
plants of English grass and grain, for the purpose of making hats and bonnets.

The following instructions
for the making of porterwill clearly show what sort of stuff
is sold at public houses in London; and we may pretty fairly suppose,
that the public house beer in the country is not
superior to it in quality. "A quarter of malt, with these ingredients,
will make five barrels of good porter. Take one quarter of high
coloured malt, eight pounds of hops, nine pounds of treacle, eight
pounds of colour, eight pounds of sliced liquorice
root, two drams of salt of tartar, two ounces of Spanish
liquorice, and half an ounce of
capsicum." The author says, that he merely gives the ingredients, as used
by many persons.

Quotation for the Day.

Buy a man a beer, and he
wastes an hour. Teach a man to brew, and he wastes a lifetime.

Monday, August 22, 2011

I was not intentionally continuing the theme of medicinal
cakes when I settled on the recipe for this day. Liquorice has a long history
of medicinal use, it is true, but what caught my eye about this particular cake
is that it is a ‘real’ cake – a real seventeenth century cake that is, leavened
with eggs. It is not named ‘liquorice cake’ but the root does feature as one of
the significant flavourings. The usual ‘liquorice cake’ found in historical
cookery books is what we would now think of as a lozenge or candy intended for
medicinal use.

Liquorice did have a culinary use in the past, in addition
to its medical applications. It was used to flavour gingerbread for example,
but I have not found any other examples of it in baked goods, until this
discovery. I will continue my search and keep you informed.

Here it is, from Sir Theodore Mayerne’s book Archimagirus
Anglo-Gallicus, published in 1658.

To make fine Cakes in the form of rings.

Take a quart of fine flower, an ounce
of Colliander-seed, one ounce of Anniseeds, a good piece of liquorish, half a
pound of sugar, two new laid egs, new milke to wet it withal, being warmed, and
so make boughts* in the form of rings.

* ‘boughts’ puzzled me initially. The
OED tells me that a ‘bought’ is ‘The
bend or loop of a rope, string, or chain; the part between the ends or points
of attachment; the fold of a cloth, etc.; a turn or involution.’

Sunday, August 21, 2011

My story last week on ‘Medicated Gingerbread’ seems to have
interested quite a number of you, and my own interest is far from sated.
Naturally, I have been in search of similar dishes.

There are many recipes from ancient times in which a
specific spice or herb is added for its perceived medicinal effect, and there
are many recipes from the Victorian era for ‘invalid foods’ such as broths and
bland puddings suitable for the weakly or indisposed - but what I have been in
search of are the less obviously therapeutic dishes.

A single book has solved my dilemma. Meals medicinal: with
"herbal simples" (of edible parts) Curative foods from the cook in
place of drugs from the chemist(1905), by William Thomas Fernie contains many, many recipes with alleged
therapeutic benefits, which you could place on the table at your next dinner
party, and your guests have no inkling of the good you were doing them. Many
recipes are completely delicious and indulgent, and it is a marvellous fantasy
to hope that one day, dietitians might declare the following to be ‘health
foods’!

For making Brandy Snaps of Ginger, which are carminative*, and
gently relaxing to the bowels, take one pound of flour, half a pound of coarse
brown sugar, a quarter of a pound of butter, one dessertspoonful of allspice,
two dessertspoonfuls of ground ginger, the grated peel of half a lemon, and the
juice of a whole, lemon; mix all together, adding half a pound of dark brown
treacle (not golden syrup), and beat well. Butter some sheet tins, and spread
the paste thinly over them, and bake in a rather slow oven. When done, cut it
into squares, and roll each square round the finger as it is raised from the
tin. Keep the Snaps in a dry, closely-covered tin, out of any damp, so that they
shall

remain crisp.

*Having the quality of expelling flatulence.

And if your stomach
is qualmish, or you simply want an excuse to indulge in macaroons for
breakfast, here it is:

As an eligible piece of confectionery which is light,
sustaining, and somewhat sedative to an irritable, or qualmish stomach, the
macaroon (" maccare," to reduce to pulp) is admirable, either at
breakfast (instead of the customary egg, including the yolk), or by way of an
improvised luncheon, or as an occasional snack, about the easy digestion of
which no fear need be entertained. The albuminous white of egg, the demulcent,
reinvigorating sweet almond, the comforting sugar, and the tranquillising

modicum of bitter almond, with its infinitesimal quantity
of prussic acid as a sedative to the gastric nerves, make altogether a most
happy combination for the objects now particularized.

Quotation for the Day.

We are
indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to
be much more than what we are.